St. Matthew Island with polar bears instead of reindeer.

The guy who did my driving test (US) generally did not tell me which way to turn at interactions or Ts and would get angry if I hadn’t guessed correctly. Apparently, it was very obvious to him where I should be going, and he shouldn’t have had to tell me.

At the time, my area held the test in the city with the worst designed roads. Experienced drivers (such as me today) can easily take wrong turns there. It’s like each stretch of road between intersections was independently designed by different people who never communicated.

It’s not absolute, yes. But we’re not talking about any situation—specifically white and black children using a specific racial slur. One of those belongs to a group that has been (and still is) systematically persecuted with that term connected. The other has not. We’re not seriously going to say that one white kid potentially being bullied is somehow comparable to the history of societal persecution against black people I hope.

The point I was making is it’s not reasonable to turn one situation of someone being bullied as evidence that black people are not allowed to use the n word if white people can’t. That’s it. I’m really amazed that is somehow controversial.

How is it taunting if she doesn’t want to say it back? The entirety of her response could be, “Yep.” It wouldn’t be taunting for someone to tell me, “You can’t do nuclear physics.” I would agree with them and be slightly confused why they were apparently out of the blue stating it.

If she’s truly being randomly bullied, that’s not going to be solved by telling black people they can’t use that word. A bully would just say something else. This is a rather easy one to deflect.

Because it’s not your place to tell people from a marginalized group how they are allowed to interact with the slurs that have been used against them. Reclaiming words and for once holding the power around the word is their right if they so choose.

It’s your job as a parent to explain the historical and social context to your children. You have work to do if your child is bothered they can’t call other kids a slur that those children have reclaimed. It does nobody any good to bury our heads in the sand, say persecuted people can’t say it if my privileged child can’t say it, and pretend there’s no complex history there.